Spling on ‘Close to Home’ SAfm Playwriting Competition Win, with Matthew Kalil

Welcome to Talking Movies. I’m Spling. This week we are…

No, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hi, I’m Matthew Kalil. This is Talking Movies. We’re switching things around this week because we’ve got some exciting news for everyone, and we have a subject we think you’ll all find very interesting. I’m not going to drop the news. I think we’re going to leave it to the regular person on this channel to let you know. So, Spling, do you want to tell them the news?

I think I do. Thanks, Matt. So, the news is that I, being a film critic, am also trying to do a little bit in the way of filmmaking. And on that journey, I started a script consultancy, reviewing scripts for screenwriters and consulting with filmmakers to help shape their visions and reach their full potential. And I decided to do something for myself, which was write a script. And along came SAFM’s Play Script Writing Competition for radio, and I said, why not?

Great. So, it’s not just those who can do, teach, or those film critics that are sitting on your couch. You’re actually doing practical screenplay writing as well.

Absolutely. Yeah. I just thought to myself, I have been helping so many people with their things, their creative endeavours. Let me see what I can do.

And so, you submitted the script to the competition, and what happened?

So, I submitted the script. They received 675 submissions, and mine came in the top 10. They announced the 10 finalists, and then they said they would announce it on air, and I made it into the top three. I actually came second.

Incredible. That’s great. That’s really good. I know how tough that is. I entered this competition, too, a couple of years ago, and I didn’t come second or third. I was in the top 10, and they actually made the radio play, so I presume they’re going to make yours, too.

Yes, they’re making all 10, and I’m very pleased to actually know that that’s going to happen, because then your work is realised. I’m really looking forward to seeing what they’ve got in store and how close it comes to what I had originally envisioned.

And what’s really great about this honour is that it’s just given me confirmation of what I’m doing in that area, that I can do that as well, and that the idea has got legs, because it’s a psychological thriller. It’s about a woman suffering from PTSD who goes on a solo writer’s retreat to the Eastern Cape to visit a small coastal town where she is basically trying to heal, but also ends up confronting the shadows of her past.

Amazing. This is Spling reviewing his own work. This is really good to hear.

Yes.

It’s a change.

Yes. What a strange thing to do.

And tell me, what is the difference between—I think the listeners might find this quite interesting—is the difference between writing a script or a movie script as opposed to a radio script?

There are some fundamental differences. When you are writing a script for film, obviously the visual is the main driving force. Obviously, sound is massive when it comes to film in any event. When you are on radio and you only have voice and sound, then you are very much more focused on the sound, the audio atmosphere, creating an immersive world through sound effects, through language, through character dynamics that are obviously not going to be visual.

You have to have the nuance come through in the voice, and you aren’t able to really give the audience a very clear view of what you’re doing. So things like flashbacks are incredibly difficult because all you’re doing is you can’t – you could have the narrator saying something about “10 years ago” or something like that, but when you don’t have that, all you’ve got is sound cues.

And to try and manufacture that so that it conveys the idea to the audience is actually quite tricky. And things like intrusive thoughts.

-and I’ve read the script, and there are a lot of these elements that you put in there, so that’s quite adventurous of you. Just remind me the title of the script again.

It’s called Close to Home, and I was inspired by a film called Locke with Tom Hardy because basically the entire film takes place in a car and through a series of phone calls. And in a similar way, I decided to turn Close to Home into a radio play or to make it scalable so that you could make this film on next to nothing, but you could also really take it up to like whatever 20 million if you really wanted to.

Great. So the next step is making it into a film. Are we going to have a film that can actually be reviewed on Talking Movies perhaps?

I really hope that in a couple of years or sooner, we’ll actually be able to review a film that I’ve made as a director, as a writer, as a producer. I’ve made a short film already called Good Boy as a producer and a writer, but I’m really trying to move more into the filmmaking side of things.

So Close to Home would probably be my feature film debut if it is. Maybe this movie will be here one day and we will hear you reviewing your own movie on Talking Movies.

Yes. No, I really hope that that happens. I like the idea of Close to Home because this violent culture that we live in is Close to Home. It’s always with us. And when we are walking down the road, we aren’t entirely able to relax and we kind of all have a degree of PTSD in a way as a country because we are in healing. So I feel as though the story speaks to a much bigger, overarching narrative for our country. And also it’s a very intimate story about a woman, a mother, her daughter, and trying to cope with some of the things that life throws at us.

So I hope it’ll give a lot of inspiration to people and when it comes out, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Thank you so much. Thank you for joining me on Talking Movies, Spling.

Thank you, Matt. Have a great day. Cheers.